A leash of lies - Editor's note

Progressive, The, August, 2003 by Matthew Rothschild

Everywhere I go these days, people ask me one question: Can Bush be beat? Like Molly Ivins and Howard Zinn and Ruth Conniff, who write on the subject this month, I believe the answer is yes. I doubt the economy will rebound fast enough (if it does at all) to nudge the unemployment figures much below 6 percent, especially with the slashing of state budgets around the country. I doubt wages will rise in real terms. And I doubt the occupation of Iraq will get rosier any time soon. U.S. soldiers are sitting ducks there, and as Iraqi nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists keep taking potshots at them, the patience of the American people will gradually run thin, especially as Bush's pretexts grow more embarrassing by the minute.

A poll in the June 15 Chicago Tribune provides hope. While the poll found that 57 percent of Illinois voters approved of the job Bush was doing, only 42 percent were prepared to vote for him again. An equal number did not want to see him reelected. So all those astronomically high approval ratings we've been seeing for twenty months now don't automatically translate into four more years of plutocracy.

As Conniff points out, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich are espousing progressive views that excite the grassroots. Dean has been good on Iraq and gay rights. And Kucinich has been the leading voice in the House of Representatives condemning Bush for dragging the United States into war on a leash of lies. I heard Kucinich speak in Madison on May 31. He talked about the need to "reclaim our democracy." He called for universal health care, universal pre-kindergarten, free college education, and a new WPA. He demanded "total nuclear disarmament," and he said the United States should sign the land mines treaty and join the International Criminal Court.

I wasn't totally blown away, though. Kucinich can be a bit of a New Age hand-holder for me: He's one part Paul Wellstone, one part Mr. Rogers, and one part Deepak Chopra. ("We must use the power of our hearts.... There is an advancing tide toward human unity. With the new millennium ... there's a feeling of hope. That's really where the world wants to go: toward unity.") But as my wife, Jean, said, at least you know the guy's got a moral compass--unlike the man in the White House now.

We don't endorse candidates here. But, like Ivins, I'm heartened that in the Democratic race, there are at least some candidates who are pushing progressive ideas to the fore.

For the past few months, our ace investigative reporter, Anne-Marie Cusac, has been on the trail of environmental scams. She discovered that some companies have been cheating on the pollution data they've been giving the EPA. So we sent her down to Louisiana to poke around a little more. She interviewed residents whose homes and yards were devastated because a sewage company perpetrated a fraud. The good news is the company was successfully prosecuted. The bad news is, we're likely to see many more frauds like this in the years ahead as Bush pushes through his privatization plans.

The President, acting out a Republican fantasy, wants to reduce the size of the government workforce by 50 percent. This will mean not only fewer unionized workers but also fewer regulators. The Administration believes that it can outsource the watchdogs, but Cusac shows how dangerous that strategy could prove to be for our air, water, land, and health. It's a grimy story that may only get grimier.